Louise Erdrich positions herself as a contemporary tribal storyteller with her interlocking tales of her Chippewa people and her German-American ancestors. From the tribe's struggle to survive ("Tracks"), to the Depression ("The Beet Queen"), to the mid-twentieth century ("Love Medicine"), to contemporary times ("The Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love, " and "The Antelope Wise"), Erdrich sympathetically, compassionately, and realistically renders a portrait of people striving to survive governmental bureaucracy, Catholic Church intrusion, and climatic severity.